


The Many Facets of Home

by Khantael



Category: Warchild Series - Karin Lowachee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:46:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5412194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khantael/pseuds/Khantael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niko remembers when he took an injured child home, Yuri tries to adapt to his new circumstances, and Jos ponders what makes a home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Niko: Turncoat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yourinsomnia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourinsomnia/gifts).



> Have a lovely Yuletide! 
> 
> By the way, it says chapter, but this is actually a set of unconnected stories. (Well, they're connected in the sense that they all happen in the same continuity, but it's not a chaptered story.)

It began on a station.

It would have seemed to be a particularly unassuming station in the Dragons, one no more important than any other, but this one had reason to become a target. This one held prisoners of war. Not just any prisoners, either, but Ash S’tlian: not only brother to the Warboy, but also an important strategic advantage. EarthHub had a significant advantage in terms of numbers and supplies; all of Aaian-na’s best assets had to be available to keep fighting their corner. If they couldn’t win a war of attrition, they could fight smart instead.

Niko found the name Warboy more than a little distasteful. He spoke enough of the language of the Hub to know it was not meant out of respect, but it acknowledged that he could fight. _Would_ fight.

Soljets swarmed over the concourse, a vortex of black uniforms and angry expressions waving their guns at _Turundrlar_ and the threat it presented. The station trembled with fear, sending people flying into others and knocking them down, guns skidding from hands. Knocking them off balance, quite literally.

Smoke billowed around the area as chunks were torn from buildings, fires streamed outwards, a cry for help when it was already too late to save them. Civilians screamed and cried and ran, away from the flames, away from the threat, away from the soljets.

The soljets pulled themselves up and soldiered on, a smog of black creeping up on the highly visible white robes of the _ka’redane_ as they fought to retrieve their people.

Niko observed. He could fight as well as any other, but he was the leader here and rescuing Ash while putting himself at risk of capture would simply be a foolish proposition, and Niko hadn’t kept fighting for so long by being a fool.

It was because of this that he saw it. Some of the soljets at the rear started to become distracted, and then set off shouting. He was fairly sure they were swearing, but not at the striviirc-na. Not this time.

A boy skidded along the floor at some force, face-down and floppy enough that it was clear he was unconscious or worse, and visibly injured. The small EarthHub boy lay crumpled on the concourse, and around him the fight went on. One or two soljets had turned briefly to try and spot the perpetrator, but it would be suicidal to stop in the middle of an attack to change enemies and end up in a two-on-one situation. Besides, he didn’t seem to be aiming for anyone else, so they turned back to fighting the striviirc-na but they didn’t seem fully focused.

Niko would never quite know what made him do it, but he signalled over a _ka’redan_ and said quietly, “Bring him here.”

As a force, the soljets had paid little attention to the boy, but when the _ka’redan_ scooped him up and it was noticed by several soljets they made their outrage clear. A few guns trained on her faltered at the realisation they’d have to shoot _through_ a child to do any harm here, while many others remained oblivious as the battle raged on.

The boy’s limbs hung weakly. Stealing a boy or stealing a body, Niko didn’t know what would be worse in their eyes, and didn’t particularly care.

Niko looked down into a pale, grimacing, pain-filled face. The wound was not only nasty, but dangerous. Still, he could see that the child was alive, for now.

“We will take him,” Niko said quietly. Niko, who’d always been told that he had the body of a human yet the heart of a striviirc-na.

This was it. The beginning of Niko’s new life, the beginning of Ash’s rage starting to boil over and slowly form a deluge… here it all began.

Back on _Turundrlar,_ he said, “Welcome home,” to Ash without an ounce of sarcasm.

* * *

“ _Eja_ , I do not understand!”

Deference warred against frustration and lost as Ash paced up and down the length of the room. As the _kia’redan bae_ , Niko’s decisions were to be respected: no matter how odd they may seem, nobody would question him. As a _ka’redan_ , Ash should not be questioning him, but they were also brothers and this was as much a familial disagreement.

Niko humoured him. “What do you not understand? He was sick. Now he is not.”

“He is not,” Ash agreed. “So why is he still here?”

“Would you suggest I return him to Chaos?” Niko asked flatly. Chaos was still in a frenzy after the dock bombings and EarthHub battleships were patrolling the area particularly carefully, as if they would go back for more when they had already got all that they needed and more.

“Of course not!” Ash gestured in frustration. For a man who loathed the Hub, he acted more like a Hub Human than Niko ever did: when he was very emotional, you could read his every feeling in the lines of his face, in the movements of his hands. The time he had spent in the custody of EarthHub had hardly endeared him towards them; it had just made the anger sharper and more targeted. “After he has been in our esteemed company? They would lock him up.”

“Most likely.”

“You aren’t planning on keeping him here, are you?”

Niko didn’t answer. He hadn’t necessarily been thinking that far ahead, but he felt reluctant to part with the boy for some reason. It was just a gut feeling, and Niko rarely went against his gut.

Ash must have seen something in his face. “ _Sraga!_ ” He wouldn’t order the _kia’redan bae_ around, but he wasn’t going to promise to agree with him either. “This is a bad idea. The Hub has taken so much from us, and still they try to take more! If you thought about it, brother, you’d see the kindest thing to do here would be to vent the boy out an airlock!”

He stormed out, leaving a rather pensive Niko behind.

* * *

Niko was there to watch the child wake.

The boy stirred quietly and his eyes took in everything. The moment he saw Niko was obvious, because he faltered for a moment, but fear dissolved like salt from his face. In the end he got up and he stared. When Niko didn’t react, he went back to exploring.

Every Hub Human Niko had ever met had far too much to say, but the boy said nothing. It intrigued him.

Niko would have let him go on exploring had he not turned to the window, which may have been a shock a little too far, so Niko stopped him and the boy finally started with the questions. So did Niko.

Apparently the boy was running from a pirate named Falcone. This meant little to Niko, whose knowledge of EarthHub personnel was limited to information he might find useful such as the captains of the battleships who so frequently fought the striviirc-na fleet. Pirates were low down on that list: they could be a nuisance, but they were as much of a nuisance to the Hub itself too and they had interests that often weren’t best served by a full-on attack on a striivirc-na fleet. He’d fought pirates before, but it wasn’t his biggest priority.

The child's name was Jos, and he was clearly terrified of the striviirc-na. Niko’s human face, covered as it was with intricate tattoos, was the only thing comforting him: it was as familiar as it was unfamiliar.

Lost on a strange world he didn’t understand, Jos stared at Niko.

If this were EarthHub questioning a sympathiser, Jos would be confronted with everything that was wrong with being a sympathiser, being a traitor to your people. But that was not Niko’s way.

He just asked “why?”, sowed a seed, and walked away.

* * *

The idea came to Niko as Jos poked around on his slate – or perhaps it didn’t come so much as awaken from its slumber slowly like a cat stretching in the sunlight; curiosity opening its curtains to another picture entirely.

He’d expected the boy to be a lot less receptive than this. He wasn’t always happy about it, but he sat, and he listened, and he learned. In the absence of another choice, he was even beginning to learn ki’hade. Niko was beginning to learn that, when chucked into a sink or swim situation, Jos would always swim. He was too stubborn to drown.

He had the attitude of EarthHub through and through, but he wasn’t as stuck in his ways, and his fear of the striviirc-na came from twisted folk tales, not direct experience. He’d spent a year being tormented by a pirate captain and was naturally distrustful, but simply showing him patience and kindness was beginning to wear down hastily erected walls that had entrenched themselves in his psyche. Slowly. Very slowly.

They weren’t going to hurt him, they kept saying, and Jos seemed to be beginning to believe. Niko was beginning to believe, too: beginning to believe that there was a purpose to all this, to a boy who was slowly starting to sympathise but whose words and actions still clearly came from the Hub.

Niko felt like he was running out of time.

Around them, the war continued. Both sides suffered casualties, however being outgunned and outmanned made it clear what would happen in the end if things carried on as they were. But here was an opportunity, a bridge between EarthHub and Aaian-na, that could be used.

It would be a risk in so many ways, but it was the unexpected type of move that could really pay dividends if it worked out.

Niko watched the boy’s frustration as he tried to read the words on the screen, but he didn’t give up.

It reminded Niko that he couldn't give up either.

* * *

“Niko.”

He turned and acknowledged the voice; a command in all but words. Truthfully, he had been expecting this confrontation.

“You have not introduced us.” She didn’t need to say who. She meant Jos, the child she’d seen him return from his mission to retrieve Ash with, who’d been pale (although not by striviirc-na standards) and unconscious and who nobody had seen since. Niko had spoken to her about what he was doing, but it seemed that wasn’t going to be enough any more.

His mother knew they were running out of time too. And while Ash hadn’t said anything to Niko on the subject since that first confrontation, it was clear he wasn’t entirely happy with the arrangement. Niko hoped that his lack of discussion meant he was coming around to the idea. Ash would be an asset in training the boy.

“He is not ready,” Niko said, but even as it left his mouth he was not entirely sure that it was true any more. It _had_ been true, but Jos was now settling down and seemed to have realised the futility in running. Whatever he may have thought of Niko, he was the only familiar person on this planet. Jos was smart. He knew that.

His discomfort didn’t go unnoticed, either.

“Is he not ready, or are you not ready?” His mother asked bluntly. He should have known better than to be anything less than honest with her.

“Perhaps a little of both. Still, leaving has to be on his own terms.”

Enas was no fool. She knew that pushing him too far, too soon could lead to losing him.

There was no question of anybody else entering his room, not yet. It was Jos’ sanctuary there, and to deprive him of it would seem cruel and would destroy the trust that Niko had been painstakingly building. Every action taken, every action _not_ taken had to be carefully considered due to the filter of Falcone that permeated everything he saw, everything he thought.

Without even seeing him, Enas had commented on how damaged Niko made the boy sound. When he’d mentioned the name Falcone, back at the beginning before he’d even researched the man, she hadn’t been surprised. She knew his reputation, and had heard Markalan’s firsthand accounts.

“You care.” She observed, and it felt like it should be a rebuke, or a warning. But Niko didn’t feel ashamed. This boy, who if things worked out smoothly might be sent as a sympathiser into the heart of the striviirc-na hating EarthHub and be at real risk of mortal peril, had the drive to survive.

Niko was the _kia’redan bae_ first and foremost. His duty would always be to Aaian-na first, above all else. He could plan to send Jos out there as a spy guiltlessly, and still care.

Making steps to halt the war which was going to lead to ruination in the long-run had to take precedence over any feelings. Didn’t it?

* * *

Niko enjoyed training Jos. It felt good to have a student; he’d never had the inclination before, but he’d become quite attached to the boy and he needed the best training for his potential to be realised.

Jos soaked up information like a sponge. He was intelligent although could be a tad lazy, he fought well for somebody with no prior training and he was willing to accept Niko’s tutelage.

Although he was clearly still wary of the striviirc-na, he didn’t shy away from looking them in the face any more, although the idea still seemed to make him uncomfortable.

The time raced by as they enjoyed each other’s company. Jos also seemed to have become attached to Enas, who despite her words had become fond of him too.

Niko was uncomfortably aware that Ash would be returning soon, and it would be Niko’s turn to go back to _Turundrlar_. He enjoyed his excursions usually and he still looked forward to it, but he felt a weight in his stomach at the realisation that he would be leaving his student behind.

He postponed the news for as long as possible, so it ended up being Ash who dropped the bombshell instead.

Niko had guessed that Jos wouldn’t be happy, but found himself surprised at the way the spirit seemed to have slowly seeped out of him like sand passing through a sieve.

“What would happen to me if you died?” Jos had asked, voice cracking, the idea that the stability in his world was going to leave seeming to unbalance him in more ways than one.

Jos was a sympathiser. He’d fought Ash in _ka’redan_ clothing and he’d opened his eyes to flaws in the way the Hub governed. But the small child with tears glistening in his eyes, who fiercely shouted as if he could physically push Niko away with his words, was all the reaction of a Hub Human.

Niko returned to _Turundrlar_ visibly calm, every inch not just a sympathiser but the _kia’redan bae_ , but the trip to say goodbye in the first place and the tear that tried to escape his eye in the captain’s quarters were all learned from a Hub Human, too.

* * *

With Jos on _Turundrlar_ across from him, Niko’s words caught in his throat. It was a new experience for him, and not a pleasant one. He’d always been able to say what he wanted to before, but this time his heart was fighting his head and trying to stop the words from escaping.

Time was up. Niko needed some intel, and he needed it now. Jos was now fourteen, far from the young child he’d had picked up from a station. He spoke ki’hade fluently, he fought very well and even Ash had begrudgingly admitted he had some level of talent in comp infilitration.

He was also somehow less trusting, and had spent time trying to shove Niko away again to avoid getting hurt. Still, he’d jumped at the chance to come on the ship, a chance to spend time together and fix that fracture in their relationship.

Unfortunately, now Niko had to address the misconception. He couldn’t afford to spend more time with Jos. He’d waited as long as he dared, but now he needed to move, and finally there was an opportunity to infiltrate _Macedon_ ’s crew.

He knew that, yet part of him wanted to stay silent. There could be another way, another person, maybe they could last a bit longer-

But no. He was the _kia’redan bae_. Aaian-na had to come first. Niko believed that to his core.

For years, the boy had been trained for this, and he’d be very good at it. But it hurt. It hurt like the snap of a bone on the inside.

So he told Jos his mission, and he watched the wall of wariness start to go back up, the one that Niko’s kindness had knocked down so long ago.

Niko had never anticipated being unable to let go. Somewhere along the line, a rescued child who had been a means to an end had become something far more dear. He didn’t know when that line had been crossed, but he couldn’t suddenly separate himself from the situation, and go back to how it should be. And he wouldn’t want to.

* * *

He eventually commed his mother after dropping Jos off at Austro. It was a bit of a risk – a golden rule of comming was not to do it every opportunity that you got, but to wait until you had important information to pass on or it was appropriate to check in. It had major security benefits, for a start.

So Niko was cheating, but he felt his mother would understand. She would be missing Jos too.

“It is done,” he told her, such a simple sentence for the emotional toil going on inside him.

A pause. “Are you okay?” Enas asked. It felt like she was breaking protocol, just like him.

“I will be,” said Niko. And he meant it.


	2. Yuri: Patchwork

I awake to find Finch staring at me. It takes a few moments for the fogginess to clear away, and for me to realise that I’m leaning against something hard. I’m pressing myself up against a wall entirely unconsciously.

Sleepwalking again. I shouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps it’s not the idea of sleepwalking that’s bothering me, but the expression on Finch’s face. He’s used to this too, so why is he looking at me like I’m some sort of novelty?

“What?” I ask, sharper than I intended.

He frowns. “Yuri…”

I feel thrown off balance. When I sleepwalk, I have no memory of what I do or say. Or what I dream. Stray thoughts rattle around in my head like an empty container; everything else has fled from my brain swift as a breeze.

“Yuri!” Louder. Like he thought I’d nodded off again. He hesitates, and then, “Your family…”

I hadn’t thought about my family for years until Lukacs picked off that scab. Now nobody will even leave it to scab over again. Maybe I don’t want it to.

I raise a hand and wipe my face. It’s covered in a cold sweat.

“You keep going on about your family, I think. Your parents and…” More hesitance. “Babushka? And… and others.” As if he can’t remember. Or doesn’t want to say.

But I don’t need him to say any more. Days after dealing with the injured _Archangel_ jets on _Macedon_ , it’s obvious.

Bodies are bodies, and blood is blood. One event melds into another. At the end of the day it all just looks the same.

* * *

These quarters are locked. The sleepwalking issue is the excuse (can’t have me mistaking people as enemies in my sleep, or others seeing me as an easy target), but part of me can’t help but think it’s a convenient excuse. It’s a Marcus type of explanation covering a Falcone style reason. You can’t change how you were raised, how you were trained to think. Suspicion is supposed to keep you alive.

I wonder if it bothers Finch. I suspect he may have had a bit more freedom before I arrived, turning up again like a bad penny. And I don’t think some people really believed somebody like him could be affiliated to a pirate, but now here I am, rubbing it in their faces.

At least the Captain seems convinced of my sincerity. Or otherwise he fakes it well.

It’s strange to be here, a pirate on _Macedon_ yet not in the brig this time. As if I might belong. This ship killed the _Khan_ , and Estienne with it. They killed other pirates over the years, some of whom I’d have rendezvoused with. People, not just pirates.

But a pirate knows that killing can be necessity. Plus sometimes it's just a fact of life.

Except I’d spared my crew. I’d spared them, even knowing that my actions would make me the worst kind of traitor, and that seeing them again they’d point a weapon at me, set to kill. So that made me an ex-pirate now, bridges burned, along with an ex-prisoner and sometimes it felt like an ex-human.

Yet I’m trying. I paint on a smile like geisha paint, and focus on feeling again. If I smile enough, maybe I’ll feel it, all the way down to my heart.

* * *

Finch is out, with jet guard, getting a bit of space after he presumably got sick of me brooding about the past. I had been acting on adrenaline before, but now that I’m actually here it’s taking me time to really get my head around the decisions I made. I still believe it was the right thing, but the reality of the situation and my head aren’t quite at the same place yet and it leaves me feeling like I’ve got vertigo.

Suddenly there’s a knock on the hatch. When the hatch swings open without waiting for any sort of reply I know exactly who this is even though I haven’t seen him in months.

A reminder of my mistakes, or perhaps my triumphs.

Ryan Azarcon almost saunters in, sinking down on Finch’s bunk like he owns the place. Every inch the captain’s son. I narrow my eyes at him. It’s not that I dislike him, I’d begrudgingly got used to his visits and the idea that he wasn’t just going to go away, and maybe he did have some kind of interest in my life, but it was _Finch_ ’ _s_ bunk.

Once we’d been captive and prisoner, and then prisoner and captive. There must have been some form of Stockholm Syndrome in it, that he came and talked to me as if that history didn’t exist.

“Hey,” he says as if we’re old friends.

I raise an eyebrow and my mouth stretches into a smile. “You’ve not taken your time. You miss me?”

He ignores the question, and says, “You’re different.” As if he can see it in my face.

If I wasn’t different, I’d have mocked him. Come sit over here and see just how different. But I wanted to be a reformed character, and want can go quite a long way if you let it.

“I was a bit late, but I dealt with the _Khan_ ,” I say honestly, and I’m empty of emotion. It’s just fact. I’d left a message with Otter once, and finally followed up on it years later. Not Falcone, and not the same _Khan_ , but it’s the thought that counts, right?

I expect him to say something a bit judging and righteous, that’s what it had felt like when he used to come to the brig and talk with the privilege of somebody who had never had to deal with the shit I had, but what he actually says is, “Do you miss it?”

I find, with a hollow sort of surprise, that I don’t.

My heart left the pirate mindset years ago, though my head didn’t. But you didn’t need to have heart to screw people. That was practically a pirate motto.

* * *

When I’m out and about, my ‘jet guard’ is the young man who isn’t actually a jet, my predecessor. There can’t actually be much in difference in our ages assuming you can trust his appearance, which isn’t a given on deep space carriers. But from the scraps I’d managed to hear about Falcone’s previous protégé’s, the boy who’d been ‘let go’ at Chaos hadn’t pre-dated me by much. His name is Jos Musey, according to Ryan Azarcon.

How did he get away from Falcone? Only Falcone had known, and it would have been a taboo subject. Falcone liked to talk about his successes, but his failures went undiscussed. His temper wasn’t worth rousing.

For years, I hadn’t seen the bulk of his rage – it was all the nice Marcus, the man who’d got me to join his ship with words and smiles and promises alone. Then I’d really pissed him off and there I was, pointing a gun at my oldest friend. His blood on my hands. I told myself it was mercy, but it wasn’t. It was fear.

Musey must have some sort of clout here, because he orders Finch and I out of the room, and Piotr out of his. Piotr smiles in relief when he sees me – unlike Finch and I, he’s stuck on his own and I didn’t ever have a chance to explain this whole situation to him – but seeing the jets puts a look of weary resignation on his face. At least Dorr isn’t one of them.

He’s used to having freedom of _Kublai Khan_ from having my trust (although he’d prefer to stick to Engineering unless dragged elsewhere), so he probably finds it hard to be treated like this. I understand. It’s strange to go from giving orders to following them again, although it doesn’t actually bother me anywhere near as much as I thought it might.

Perhaps in my heart, I’m no commander. Just a boy who did what he was expected because fighting against it would have done no good. You can leave the pirate world, but it can’t leave you so easily. It sinks its grip in like sharp talons.

We sit down in the mess hall to eat, and the other two jets peel off to cover the exits. Musey stays. At first we are given a wide berth. About as good as we can expect here.

Musey doesn’t look at us, though I don’t doubt if I even twitch suspiciously I’d find his eyes on me and a weapon in his hands. You just need to look into somebody’s eyes to see if they’re capable of ruthlessness. Finch isn’t. Musey is. And if I know Falcone, those reflexes will have been trained into him. Among other things.

Nobody wants to speak. The walls have eyes, and the crew have ears. A private conversation doesn’t need to be witnessed by anybody else.

It doesn’t take long for us to be recognised, sitting over here like lepers, and the whisper of anti-pirate rage buzzes around us like a swarm of angry bees.

I look at Musey again. He seems tense, but the buzz doesn’t seem to bother him. It’s almost like he’s tuned it out.

Now that nobody can hear us over their own outrage, I turn to Piotr. “Sorry.” I say. For all this. For putting us into this mess. For getting him to sabotage a ship he loved and had worked on lovingly for so long. For not even bothering to explain why.

He quirks a kind of smile, but it disappears quickly. He doesn’t hold a grudge, then. But he gifts me with honesty: “I trusted that you had a plan, Captain, I’m not sure this was the best plan.”

I’m not his Captain any more. But he feels more kinship with the idea of still being my crew rather than Azarcon’s. I suppose it’s not surprising, but I hope Azarcon doesn't hear him.

Finch’s eyes are darting around the room. The angry buzz seems to be getting louder. It isn’t everyone, but that hardly matters because it closes around us like it’s coming from stations all around.

I test my hypothesis. “Wasn’t this crazy before I got here?” I ask him.

He looks at me. “It’s not just you being here, Yuri. They’re hurting. With _Archangel_ …”

He doesn’t have to tell me. I know. I’d felt the ship blow along with my dreams of an easy evacuation. Nothing ever went easy, when you finally felt that you were making the good decisions.

Musey speaks. “You’d have to face this at some point. It may as well be now, when people remember you helping.” He sounds uncomfortable, although whether it’s his words or the fact he is speaking at all that bothers him I don’t know. He’d so often been silent, before. Perhaps he just didn’t like having to associate with us, over in the leper’s corner. “Better than remembering you before.”

The me in the brig, shouting and swearing after nearly blinding the Captain’s son. They couldn’t forget it. I could barely forget it either. Though it seemed Captain Azarcon had forgiven, and I was waiting for a catch on that, or to see what he saw in me that changed his mind.

“ _Pirates_!” someone spits from the crowd, and it’s an expletive worse than any other.

“You killed our ship!” Another. The _Archangel_ jets haven’t forgotten, of course.

On _Genghis Khan_ nobody would dream of shouting like this when Falcone had let people say. But _Macedon_ isn’t ruled by fear, and it seems people are allowed their own opinions to a degree. Or maybe it is still so raw that nobody cares for protocol, and besides, technically _their_ captain is dead.

It’s a mob mentality. I hope the jets don’t have their weapons, or I doubt we’ll be standing at all in a few minutes. We aren’t allowed weapons, of course – it’d give the wrong impression, and trying to snatch one would just make this a bloodbath.

The jets on the doors haven’t moved to ready their weapons. One looks as if no commotion is happening whatsoever, while I think I catch the other one speaking rapidly into his radio.

Musey stands. He doesn’t raise a weapon either, though he looks like he’d like to. He doesn’t look happy with the position that he’s in. I suspect that if this wasn’t his duty to guard us (or protect us as the case may be) he wouldn’t have stepped in at all.

“That’s enough.” He speaks quietly but the words still ripple through the crowd, many of whom are watching with interest.

A few people shout, but their words all blend into each other and it’s impossible to hear. There’s no need to hear the words, anyway. It’s all anger and loss and pain. There’s no coherence to that, it’s just a feeling that grips you tight and won’t let go. I know it well.

“Stay out of this, symp!” Somebody shouts back, and the only reaction from Musey is a frown. He doesn’t refute it, or try and say anything else either. He just shrugs it off like water. The insult is clearly meant for him.

Symp. Is that –

Yeah. Because symps are in abundance on _Macedon_ , especially symps clearly in Azarcon’s trust. Don't be an idiot, Yuri.

Finch looks like he’d give anything to avoid being in the middle of this mess. Piotr and I, products of the _Khan_ , stare at Musey.

He doesn’t look surprised, or apologetic. His face is carefully blank, an emotionless soldier. Or a symp.

“Hey, now what’s all this? Didja forget to invite me?” A cheerful voice, and one I recognise. For a moment I think we’re truly doomed now.

Dorr strolls in, flanked by some other jets, and his eyes flicker over the scene, taking it all in quickly.

Nobody answers with words, but the eyes on us are an answer. The eyes on me. It’s clear what the problem here is.

Dorr’s eyes glitter like needles. He smiles. He obviously has a reputation here, because people shut up. They don’t all defer, some look downright annoyed, but they don’t want to fight this battle here, not with him. Smart people. I know how much Dorr can hurt, and he has no remorse.

Dorr looks to Musey. “Muse, maybe you should take your friends back to q.” The ‘now’ goes unstated.

“Sir,” says Musey quietly, looking quite happy to get out of here. Then: “Come on.”

“Sure,” I say. “Lost my appetite anyway.”

I feel Finch’s accusing eyes on the back of my head: why, Yuri? You’re going to make it worse. We’d done this scenario time and time again in the prison, and it always ended up with someone being hurt.

But this isn’t a prison, so they say. It’s just a place where it’s not safe to be linked with pirates, either.

My mind’s still racing as we walk down the corridors, so I say what everybody else is afraid to ask, or perhaps doesn’t want to know. But I do. Falcone’s former protégé. A symp. “So, a symp,” I say.

I think he might argue, but he just says, “Yes.”

I’d worked out a lot of things with that man’s words, but I start with the easier ones, to give us all time to breathe. “You’re Otter’s contact.” Obviously. Not many symp spies would manage to get onto this carrier, which begs the question of how this one did.

“Yes.”

Once upon a time, I’d almost dealt Falcone in not to one, but to two of his former protégés. I feel a sudden urge to laugh hysterically, but mostly manage to smother it down. It would have been the biggest betrayal Falcone would have ever felt.

“You killed Falcone.”

This time there’s a pause, though it’s not one of regret. “Does it bother you?” he asks.

On one side of me stands Piotr, who’d served on _Genghis Khan_ before he came over to _Kublai Khan_ with me. On the other stands Finch, who asked a pirate to screw him because clearly we’d see sex as a commodity but has since seemed to realise that he doesn’t like the ruthless pirate side of me, where killing and plundering is the norm. I can’t please both of them, but in the end my answer need only please myself.

“Yes and no.” It’s the truth, but it sounds like an attempt around the question.

I miss Marcus. For a long time he was the only father type figure in my life, and for a while he did treat me well, and it hurts that he’s gone. But Marcus was a fictional construct and he barely existed anyway. Falcone’s death was a vindication of all the atrocious things he’d (we’d) done, all that he’d made me into, all the horrible little things that kept worlds spinning on their axis and that I knew about because I’d been raised that way. His death had almost been a relief.

Everyone else is too shell shocked to talk. By me or by Musey, I don’t know.

“Why?” I ask him when we finally reach the hatch in front of quarters. Apparently he’s going to drop Piotr off after us. Why did you kill him? Why did you tell me? Why anything?

For a long moment I don’t think he’ll say anything, but then he says, “I couldn’t run far enough.”

And I can’t say anything because I know that feeling. It’s difficult to run when you know that when you close your eyes, Falcone will always be there.

* * *

After the disaster in the mess hall, we go back to having meals in quarters for a few days. It’s not running away, but giving things a chance to simmer down, Musey says. He also says that the captain had words, and that now that the jets had got it out of their systems we’d be less likely to hear an outburst next time we came out. Still, we’d give them time to chew on the message first.

Finch had agreed to stay in, more out of concern for my safety than anything else, I think. Apparently he hadn’t been hassled nearly as much when he’d been moving around with the guard before the mess hall altercation. The crew would probably like him if my very presence didn’t drag his reputation through the mud by association alone. I can’t feel guilty, because he’s still better off here than he would be in a military prison that was never meant for people like him.

We get another visitor, and this one surprises me. Ryan Azarcon, Musey and Piotr are the only people I see. I don’t hear from the other guards who must watch the place when Musey’s on a sleepshift or something.

This isn’t any of those people, and in a quick glance at Finch I gather that this isn’t somebody he’s come across before either.

The figure who comes in looks young, with blond hair and an angular face. He’s thin, and looks vaguely familiar now that I think about it.

One of his hands is twitching with nerves. Why’s he here if he’s scared of us? He doesn’t seem the type to shout and run.

I’d be happy to wait him out and see what he wants, but Finch has been playing nice here. “Hey.” A friendly nod. “Who are you?”

His eyes turn to Finch almost as if he’s surprised to see him. So it’s me he’s after, then. I must be popular. Still, he answers, although he turns back to me as he does so. “Name’s Evan D’Silva.”

“Nice,” I say, then plunge into the point. “You know who we are, I’m sure, so I’ll skip the introductions. You’re not a jet, why are you here?”

As if anybody else would even care that we exist here.

For some reason that makes an amused smile appear on his face, almost a smirk. Something seems to have cheered him up. He shrugs, now playful. “Maybe I figured you’d need some company so you two don’t go stir crazy down here.” He fumbles in his pocket for a moment and brings out a box. “Cigret?”

I can’t figure out his angle, but it sure as hell isn’t just cigrets.

“Thanks,” says Finch, and I take one too with a nod. He lights them for us without us needing to ask. After the last few days a smoke would be a welcome release, since others were… unavailable. Nobody wants to leave sharp objects in a room with two convicted killers.

“Why are you here?” I say, not unkindly, but I’m not in the mood for guessing games.

“My job.” A definite grin now. “Crew Recreation and Morale. So I hear you guys are stuck here, and I figure you need a lift.” He smiles. This is the expression that I recognise, the coy grin that says more than words to. A grin I recognise. The grin of a geisha.

Azarcon has geisha on his ship? I can’t see it, but not impossible. He did learn from Falcone after all.

Finch catches the innuendo too, and shifts backwards slightly. Probably doesn’t want to end up in this sort of situation again. Last time he got stuck with me, and see what’s happened since.

D’Silva laughs. “You don’t recognise me, do you? That’s what I came to see.”

I stare at him now. “Recognise?” So the nagging feeling of familiarity isn’t a lie, but I can’t place it. It hides away like figures in the fog.

He hesitates for a moment, but he started this conversation and he’s going to finish it. I see it in his face. He steps forward and pulls up a sleeve, shows me a tattoo entwined up his arm. It’s familiar, but not because of _Macedon_. It’s not _Macedon_ at all. It’s _Shiva_.

One of _Shiva’s_ crew got kept aboard _Macedon_? Azarcon’s not that magnanimous.

I try and work it out, examining that face. His looks, his age… there can’t have been that many people his age last time I was aboard _Shiva_ that I’d have had any contact with. In fact, I could only recall one person who would have fit the bill, and the youngster’s face from my memory morphs suddenly into the adult in front of me.

“You were… the protégé?” Azarcon must really like all these protégés running free. I thought he hated the idea, but maybe he just sweeps us all up like broken things that need removing before anybody hurts themselves.

“Right.” A shark grin.

“What _is_ a protégé?” Finch asks quietly instead. Finch, who’s so ignorant of the inner workings of the pirate world because he was never involved with this nightmare until he became my cellmate and got tangled up with me. Fuck a pirate and get fucked in return, it seems. 

“Special training,” Evan says, tapping the end of his nose as code for a secret. It’s impossible to explain in just a few words, and there are many things I’d rather Finch not know, though he’s probably put a lot together from my sleep stories. I can control myself in the day, but there’s just no controlling my mouth at night. Evan’s explanation is about as good as it gets.

Finch looks like he wants to ask more, but Evan levers himself up first from where he’d sank down on a bunk. “Better go, people will talk if I stay here too long.”

“They’ll think you’re reforming,” I say, with humour.

“I know,” he says, without.

* * *

“Are you mad that I brought you here?” I ask Finch one of those early shifts.

“No,” Finch says. “We both tried.” To save _Archangel_. To stop Lukacs. We just weren’t very successful. But we’re at least free, for a given value of free. This is better than Earth.

He’s trying, too. I see it in his eyes. Finch wants to make it here, maybe he even likes it. It’s a fresh start for him, away from a past not worth thinking about, and a place that never gave him a chance to explain. And who am I to wreck it for him? I need to try too, because I want Finch here beside me. And he seems to want to be beside me, too.

This isn’t just an arrangement anymore, but something more.

Once I’d thought I’d broken into too many pieces to ever find. I was and had been too many things, and those things had impacted me heavily. Child. Refugee. Pirate. Protégé. Hanamachi. Whore. Killer. Captain. Kidnapper. Prisoner. Traitor.

But Finch is helping me gather those pieces, one by one, and stitch myself back together. It’s like a patchwork quilt: the parts aren’t all there, and some fragments are so tiny that they feel like dust, but slowly we work on patching the mishmash of pieces together, to make it as close to complete as we can. It’s not Yurochka, Yurochka is gone, but it’s a version of Yuri that I can live with.

It’s a version that Finch can live with too.


	3. Jos: Home

The smell brings it all back.

The sweet smell of vines, the odour of spices that I associate with Aaian-na and are probably more a memory reaching out tiny hands than something I’m actually smelling… for a moment, I am nine years old, looking up at a world so alien that it steals the breath from my lungs.

But the alien world isn’t alien to me any more. It’s as familiar as the back of my hand.

I stare at the landscape; the beautiful mountains and the sky stretching endlessly around that still make me momentarily dizzy. Ships and stations can make you a bit of an agoraphobic. It’s surreal, like stepping back through one of my old paintings, everything untouched and much the same as when I left years ago, only now I feel like a giant, standing tall next to things that seemed to tower over me in my memory.

But it’s not the same, not any more. The Caste Master is dead and while this isn’t an unheard of occurrence, it’s thrown everything into turmoil all over again.

And I am different. Of course I am, after so long with this crew. I am ultimately loyal to Niko, but I respect Captain Azarcon too. And I have friends… or so they keep telling me.

It feels strange to be standing here. When Niko handed me off to _Macedon_ , part of me shut down. I didn’t think I’d ever get a chance to come back here, off on a mission that could go on indefinitely and that had a high probability of me ending up dead, or Niko. He had to fight too. Would I ever return to Aaian-na if Niko died, or would I run from the memories like phantoms that have no desire to let go?

I’d grown to love Aaian-na, but I'd always known that my place is in space.

* * *

When I was a kid, my world was the confines of a merchant ship. _Mukudori_ was reasonably sized for a merchant, but hardly a vast expanse. Since I was small, though, it felt massive to me.

Before _Genghis Khan_ , before I learned the importance of being economical with my words and actions, I used to smile and read and run around with Evan. He was older than me and could be quite mischievous, but he used to let me tag along after him whatever reason, even when he was hanging around with his older brothers sometimes. We’d find our own entertainment in the drab corridors, have sleepovers and entertain ourselves. We laughed. We lived. We were kids.

It puzzles me, now, that we could ever have been so carefree, that there was ever a time where every action didn’t appear suspect, where I could feel comfort in the grip of a hand rather than revulsion.

 _Mukudori_ reminded me of the sense of being safe, despite my last memory of it being in the throes of battles as the people I’d spent all my life with screamed in fear out of my sight line. Or more than fear.

Falcone blew up my home, and we kids all drifted apart like stardust, or debris from the wreckage of a ship.

So many years later, I sit in my bunk and look across the room to the other bunk, where Evan is slouching. He’s twitching for a cig but I’ve finally convinced him of the idea that I don’t want him smoking in quarters, not when I’m here. He probably does when I’m out, but he’s been good with it recently, unless he’s annoyed at me.

Evan pushes because he’s not scared of the symp, he tells me. No mask will work with him because he knew me before I knew what a mask was, he says.

I tell him to shut up.

“What’s eatin’ you?” Evan asks. I’m surprised he’s said anything - I must have been staring too long. Evan seems to think that I should sit and talk my feelings out all the time, but those thoughts are my own and I don’t like to share them. My mind is a place for just me, where nobody else can touch or take without consent.

Time and time again I say nothing, yet Evan still tries. More than ever since we started rooming together, when I came back onto _Macedon_ after everybody knew what I was. _Who_ I was.

Still, maybe it can’t hurt to give a little today, and I’m curious about him too.

“Do you ever think about _Mukudori_?”

I see the surprise that I’ve answered in his face, or maybe it’s what I’ve said. He smiles, an Evan smile that smothers all other expression. I’ve never been able to read it.

“What’s brought this on?”

I don’t answer, and the silence drags on. He shakes his head in exasperation.

“Nah.” He smiles disarmingly. “It’s a long time ago.”

So it doesn’t matter? My thoughts must show on my face, because he answers like I spoke the words aloud.

“Hey, I live in the moment, not the past.”

For people like us, looking to the past is looking through a window into _Shiva_. Or _Genghis Khan_. Seeing the people we were then, or before then, can be hard to swallow.

Evan also isn’t being completely honest, at least if the jets are right. The jets always tell me Evan’s fixated on me, and I’m not blind. But it’s not me Evan’s looking at, but _Mukudori_ : not the ship, but the people, the connection.

Our home is dead. But maybe home can be people too.

When I close my eyes and think of home, I think of Niko.

* * *

When I’d last been on Aaian-na, I’d been a symp who, despite the lack of tattoos or altered pigmentation, seemed every inch an Aaian-na sympathiser. Now here I am with an EarthHub captain and jets and I look like an intruder, just another human who doesn’t belong on a world celebrating striviirc-na culture.

Captain Azarcon is only allowed a limited entourage for this visit to Aaian-na. Some striviirc-na have views akin to the Hub Centralists; anti-human and pro-advancing an agenda of use only to the striviirc-na, and it is best not to antagonise them. Non-symps have never before stepped on Aaian-na and even a few being here could pollute the tranquil environment.

Or does disagreeing with your own government and befriending the Warboy automatically amount to a crew of symps without anybody really realising it?

Azarcon wants the best jets with him, but also jets that he knows are loyal and aren’t prejudiced against the striviirc-na. Somehow he picks Dorr, who is loyal as a dog but smirks like a jackal. Dorr antagonises, but he antagonises people equally.

If he isn’t shot before we even meet Niko it’ll be a miracle.

Azarcon doesn’t give much away, but Dorr swears cheerfully as he experiences a planet for the first time. “Shit, it’s too fuckin’ big.” The smile doesn’t shift off his face, but his eyes track around hungrily on an environment he won’t have seen with his own eyes. He knows the words for these things but has only ever seen them in pictures.

He’s a long way from home, yet here he is and walking. He’ll walk until he can’t stop.

* * *

Captain Azarcon assigns me to guard Kirov, and maybe there’s a sense of humour in that or maybe it’s a sense of protection. He’s even less popular here than me, and perhaps it bothers him more than me.

I navigate the ship between glares that make don’t even make me wince. It’s even more hostile than before with the former _Archangel_ jets on board, because at least the _Macedon_ crew knew me. Now I’m just a stranger and a symp.

I don’t like spending too much time with Kirov. It isn’t like seeing Falcone, but it’s like seeing a broken reflection in a mirror. Me, and very much not me. I don’t want to think about that, but he brings up _Genghis Khan_ like it’s of interest to me… or therapeutic to him.

He’s abandoned the pirate life, but nobody’s sympathetic to that except maybe his companions. He can’t talk to the pirates about it, and _Macedon_ ’s main target has been pirates for a while now. After blowing _Archangel_ , pirates are hardly in the jet’s good books, especially a pirate who had a hand in what went down. He’s under guard for his own protection, to stop a rogue former _Archangel_ from slipping in and taking revenge.

Like me, he ran away, but not from Falcone. Partly from Falcone’s shadow, from the world of the pirates, but mostly from Black Ops.

I got lucky when the striviirc-na grabbed me. He’ll be lucky being here on _Macedon,_ too, in the end.

* * *

In the mess hall, I sit with the three of them, Kirov, Finch and the engineer Tyborsky. It started as an order and it’s become a routine. It’s an opportunity for them to stretch their legs and for the crew to get used to them. It also used to be an opportunity for the crew to try and needle them, but less so now.

Of the three, Finch is the most bearable. He knows the value of a silence. He actually reminds me of Cleary, who I had liked in my training yet didn’t get to see so often any more. He’s also never been a pirate. Just hooked up with one instead, and the thought churns my stomach like acid. I don’t like to think about such things, because it makes Falcone creep into my mind like a particularly persistent headcold.

He spends a lot of time with Kirov, but he’s also the one who will openly interact with the crew at times. He’s been here longer than the other two, of course, and already knew some jets from the disbelieving introduction he received, yet he still wants to build bridges and ignore past experiences.

Kirov says he’s a good man, or a fool.

Maybe he just doesn’t want to end up in the brig again, where there’s room for nothing besides your own thoughts.

But he tells us that he wants a fresh start. He’s here now, out of prison, and don’t people keep saying that _Macedon_ is the place for people to get second chances?

We need second chances more than ever these days.

* * *

I forget about Azarcon and the jets when I see Niko. For a long moment, my world shifts into tunnel vision and nothing exists outside of it.

I look him in the eye, a traditional striviirc-na form of greeting. Niko’s smile warms his face, although his eyes are still like chips of ice shifting in the sunlight. Niko had taken to the announcement that I would stay on _Macedon_ with reasonable professionalism, yet now the Caste Master’s death had left strained worry lines around his eyes. He seemed to have aged a few years in the short spell of my absence.

I try to return the favour with a smile. It feels odd on my face, like wearing somebody else’s uniform.

 _Macedon_ may be the place where I feel like I physically belong, the place where I can finally follow my own path in life and forge my own friendships, but my feelings are with Niko. He’s the one who taught me how to live again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And that's it. Hope you enjoyed and this cheered up your Yuletide season! 
> 
> The original plan was for four stories for each of the four requested characters, but this thing grew out of control quite quickly and I ended up having to drop one for time reasons. Sorry, Finch. Maybe next year!


End file.
